Once upon a time in Mexico...

Mona Bricke tells us of her year volunteering with PBI on the Mexico project.

Not an easy assignment, to write about my first year as a volunteer with the Mexico Project of PBI (I am just beginning my second year, after a three month break in Europe). Such a lot of things happened during that year, it sometimes seems as if half a lifetime had passed instead of a meager 12 months.

Maybe I should start with the questions people asked me during the presentations of the Mexico Project I did during these last three months. It turned out to be quite difficult to get across how potentially dangerous the situation in Mexico is for many social and human rights activists. The main image of Mexico most people have is one of sand, sun, fun and tequila. And you can definitely find a lot of that all over the country if you’re out to have a good time. For many people therefore, to be told that in Mexico people are being intimidated, tortured, raped, and killed for political reasons on a regular basis comes as something of a shock. But it is there for everybody to see, if they know where to look: Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the US State Department all write about grave Human Rights deficiencies in Mexico in their reports, as do various Mexican Human Rights groups and organizations.

One of the FAQs (frequently asked questions) at the presentations was: “But if the situation is as bad as you describe it, how can you stand just being there without doing anything. How can you stand not to get involved?â€? I usually answer that in the beginning I had the same kind of reservations, but then I arrived in Mexico, and the first thing I realized was that I knew almost nothing – about the country, the people, about politics and how differently things work here than they do back home. Even if your Spanish is good, you have a hard time understanding what the newspapers are going on about. You need months to even begin to understand the complicated workings of politics and justice in Mexico. Things get even more complicated when you get down to the local level, which for a PBI team is the really significant arena. In the southern state of Guerrero, where the Mexico team is situated, you have to know, who is related to whom in order to understand where exactly that person belongs, socially or politically. That goes for both politicians and  people who work in human rights organizations. When I began realizing how intricate the social network can be here, the PBI principle of non-intervention began to make a lot of sense to me. I am convinced that it is much better to open or retain spaces for activists by our mere presence and by accompanying them, than it would be to intervene politically, without really knowing what that might lead to. The people we accompany know very well what they are fighting for, they don’t really need people from elsewhere to tell them what to do. All they need is the space to do it in, without fearing for their or their families’ lives.

Another question I was frequently asked was “What difference does it make to accompany just one person, out of so many who are being threatened?� My answer: Accompanying only a few representatives of the Indigenous Organization of the Mephaa People (OPIM) in the highly militarized region of Ayutla, in Guerrero, makes a big difference to a lot of people. The people we are accompanying are community organizers who have been receiving death threats and are fighting against military impunity as in the cases of Mephaa women who were raped by soldiers, for the rights of men who were forcibly sterilized and for the idea that indigenous people have inalienable human rightsThe fact that people from “the outside� are interested in what is going on in their communities does not only help the people we accompany immediately, but also has a multiplication effect on those around them.

And the question I most frequently ask myself is: “How come I don’t lose heart, when I see all the terrible things that keep on happening in Mexico? How can I stand always looking at the dark side of politics, at all the torture, murder, people who will never know what has happened to their loved ones because they have vanished without a trace?� And I answer to myself: Because I have the privilege of being able to work with incredibly courageous and committed people in this country, people who are trying to make a difference, even if it is dangerous, even if the changes that can be seen are seemingly tiny. But without me and the other team members they might not be able to keep on working, they might be killed or they might have to leave the country or stop their fight because they are too afraid to go on. It may sound paradoxical, but my world view has not turned blacker, since I started working with PBI, but rather the opposite. I am more deeply convinced than ever that we can change the world from below, if we see it as a whole. And because I see the world as a whole, I am happy to be able to support what people are doing on the other side of the world from my home country.

At the same time it is important to me that what I am doing is not a sacrifice. I am not in Mexico to make a sacrifice of my time or of myself. I am here to learn: about how people work for peace and social justice in this part of the world but also about living and working together in an international team of dedicated volunteers. I am learning about how to take care of my own needs under difficult conditions, how to shape my daily life and work according to the consensus principle. For me, these two things, living according to one’s needs and according to a group consensus are crucial stepping stones towards a different world and a different kind of society. With PBI I have the unique opportunity to be able to try to live what I am trying to create. Nobody said that would be easy (and it certainly is not), but it is deeply rewarding. After one year with the Mexico team and looking at another nine months ahead here I can say: What I have learned and am still learning here is shaping and changing my life in ways I wouldn’t have thought possible, but which are helping me to become a more balanced and complete human being.